Netherlands, Poland, Hungary, and the East Indies, found Italian authors in this age to digest and arrange their chronicles, and give them historical form. To this period belong also the "Lives of the Most Celebrated Artists," written by Vasari (1512-1574), himself a distinguished artist, a work highly interesting for its subject and style, and the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini (b. 1500), one of the most curious works which was ever written in any language. 10. GRAMMAR AND RHETORIC.--The Italian language was used both in writing and conversation for three centuries before its rules and principles were reduced to a scientific form. Bembo was the first scholar who established the grammar. Grammatical writings and researches were soon multiplied and extended. Salviati was one of the most prominent grammarians of the sixteenth century, and Buonmattei and Cinonio of the seventeenth. But the progress in this study was due less to the grammarians than to the _Dictionary della Crusca_. Among the scholars who took part in the exercises of the Florentine Academy, founded by Cosmo de' Medici, there were some who, dissatisfied with the philosophical disputations which were the object of this institution, organized another association for the purpose of giving a new impulse to the study of the language. This academy, inaugurated in 1587, was called _della Crusca_, literally, _of the bran_. The object of this new association being to sift all impurities from the language, a sieve, the emblem of the academy, was placed In the hall; the members at their meetings sat on flour-barrels, and the chair of the presiding officer stood on three mill-stones. The first work of the academy was to compile a universal dictionary of the Italian language, which was published in 1612. Though the Dictionary della Crusca was conceived in an exclusive spirit, and admitted, as linguistic authorities, only writers of the fourteenth century, belonging to Tuscany, it contributed greatly to the progress of the Italian tongue. Every university of Italy boasted in the sixteenth century of some celebrated rhetoricians, all of whom, however, were overshadowed by Vettori (1499-1585), distinguished for the editions of the Greek and Latin classics published under his superintendence, and for his commentaries on the rhetorical books of Aristotle. B. Cavalcanti (1503-1562) was also celebrated in this department, and his "Rhetoric" is the best work of the age on that subject.